Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Israel's agriculture ministry battles to contain an infestation of locusts that threatens to destroy thousands of acres of crops after swarming into the south of the country from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

Workers are spraying pesticides from the air and on land early in the morning as an estimated million-plus insects cover crops and threaten to migrate further north.

The agriculture ministry set up a hotline for farmers to call if they saw what one official described as "a medium-sized swarm" coming in advance.

Officials say a giant wave struck a pair of U.S. tourists strolling on the beach near the famous stone arch in the Pacific resort of Cabo San Lucas, killing a 65-year-old woman and leaving a 70-year-old man in serious condition.

State police say the two were walking back to their hotel when they were hit by the wave and dragged out to sea on Tuesday. They were rescued by Navy personnel. The woman was declared dead and the man was in serious condition Wednesday.

Vietnam is facing a high risk of bird flu outbreaks due to unfavorable weather conditions which reduce the animals' resistance according to the Animal Health Department under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) on Wednesday.

The disease has recurred in five provinces of northern Dien Bien, central Khanh Hoa, and southern Kien Giang, Hau Giang and Tay Ninh, where more than 14,000 chickens and ducks were affected and culled.

Specifically, the disease re-occurred in Tay Ninh border province, and at a site only about 30 km from Cambodia, where reports were made public about the bird flu affecting human beings.

Two Florida park employees were swarmed by as many as 100,000 Africanized honey bees, or “killer bees,” after accidentally disturbing a hive.

“It was like a thousand little knives poking me in my body,” Rodney Pugh, 41, told ABC Action News. He said the bees emerged as a front-end loader was removing a pile of trash from a road going into Picnic Island Park in Tampa, Florida.

The loader was also surrounded by bees. “It was like bees all in the cab,” Pugh said. “So I’m trying to swat, and they say never to swat bees.”
Both Pugh and another worker, David Zeledon, were both stung around 100 times each.

The International Business Times quoted Tehran city council environment adviser Ismail Kahram, who told Iranian news website Qudsonline.ir that the rats "seem to have had a genetic mutation, probably as a result of radiations and the chemical used on them."

"They are now bigger and look different. These are changes that normally take millions of years of evolution. They have jumped from 60 grams to five kilos, and cats are now smaller than them," Kahram said, according to the outlet.

Saudi Arabia has discovered another infection with the novel coronavirus, the World Health Organization announced Thursday.

The infected person was hospitalized in late January and died on Feb. 10, but confirmation of the infection was only made Feb. 18, the WHO said in a statement. Further investigation of the new case is underway.

The Geneva-based agency urged countries to consider testing for the new virus when patients present for care with unexplained pneumonias or when patients with severe, progressive or complicated respiratory illnesses don't respond to treatment -- especially if those patients have recently travelled to or come from parts of the world where infections have occurred.

Five men have been arrested by police after a Real IRA chief was shot and killed in a pub car park in Ireland.

The victim, who has been named locally as Peter Butterly, of Cortown, Togher, Dunleer, in Co Louth, was gunned down about 30km (19 miles) away, outside the Huntsman Pub in Gormanston, Co Meath this afternoon.

It is believed he drove into the car park, close to the M1 motorway between Dublin and Belfast just after 2pm.

Sightings of unidentified flying objects off the coast of Cape Town have increased dramatically and may indicate that the inhabitants of the Mother City are under surveillance by life from another planet, according to the founder of a website set up to log such incidents.

Gert Jordaan, founder of UFO Research of SA, said that between February 21 and February 27 many people reported seeing bright orange lights and flames in the sky.

He said that while some sightings could be attributed to meteor showers, others could have a more interesting explanation.

"Though meteors do glow orange, some of the sightings reported radical change in direction and speed. Some objects even remained stationary for five minutes or so. There might be some UFO phenomena occurring in areas around Cape Town," he told the Times newspaper.

Mr Jordaan said one other explanation was that there could be "some top-secret aircraft" being tested in the Western Cape.

"The second possibility is that life from another planet is surveying ours for making contact and offering knowledge."

With its most recent nuclear test, North Korea claims to have detonated a warhead small enough to arm its arsenal of ballistic missiles, including the Nodong. Some of my colleagues doubt the North Koreans, but I am inclined to take them at their word. The prospect that Pyongyang may deploy a small arsenal of nuclear-armed missiles naturally raises the question of whether this changes anything.

My sense is that yes, an operational North Korean nuclear arsenal may undermine stability by emboldening Pyongyang to conduct new conventional provocations. Provocations, such as the sinking of the Cheonan and the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island are bad enough in and of themselves; but what may be worse is how South Korea reacts. Washington may find crisis stability rather challenging on the Korean peninsula.

The press has often made joking references to the close relationship between US President Obama and outgoing ROK President Lee Myung-bak, referring to it as a man-crush or a bromance. With a change of leadership in Seoul and the unwelcome prospect of further nuclear advances in North Korea, it is time for some tough love. It is time to take a hard look at our interests in stability and crisis management in Korea.

President Lee Myung-bak on Monday recalled that he warned North Korea via China following the North's shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in November of 2010 that Seoul will not tolerate any further provocations.

"I conveyed my decision to China after North Korea's provocation against Yeonpyeong Island that Seoul will retaliate not just targeting the source of the attack but supporting bases behind too, by mobilizing the Army, Navy and Air Force," Lee told the Chosun Ilbo.

"I told China to convey this message to North Korea, and State Councilor Dai Bingguo went to Pyongyang to tell the North and informed me personally that the message had been conveyed."

The South Korean military notched up its defense posture on Wednesday and vowed stern punishment against North Korea’s provocations after Pyongyang warned of retaliation for imminent U.N. Security Council sanctions and Seoul-Washington joint military drills.

North Korea’s military leadership late Tuesday threatened to launch “nuclear strikes,” annul the inter-Korean truce, close its office in the border village of Panmunjom, and cut off its military hotline with the United Nations Command.

“The drills are, as the North was informed, annual South Korea-U.S. joint exercises for the defense of the Korean Peninsula,” said Maj. Gen. Kim Yong-hyun, the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s head of operations, at a news conference at the Defense Ministry in Seoul.

“If North Korea nonetheless pushes ahead with provocations that would threaten the lives and safety of our citizens, our military will strongly and sternly punish the provocations’ starting point, its supporting forces and command. We are making it clear that all preparations are completed.”

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is staging an active filibuster of John Brennan’s nomination to be CIA director, a move prompted by Attorney General Eric Holder’s admission that it could be constitutional to carry out a drone strike on an American in the United States.

Paul said that all presidents must honor the Fifth Amendment. “No American should ever be killed in their house without warrant and some kind of aggressive behavior by them,” Paul said on the Senate floor. “To be bombed in your sleep? There’s nothing American about that . . . [Obama] says trust him because he hasn’t done it yet. He says he doesn’t intend to do so, but he might. Mr. President, that’s not good enough . . . so I’ve come here to speak for as long as I can to draw attention to something that I find to really be very disturbing.”

“I will not sit quietly and let him shred the Constitution,” Paul added.”No person will be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process,” he said, quoting the Fifth Amendment.

On the evening of March 6, 2013, Comedy Central Europe displayed a series of purportedly comedic "subliminal" messages attacking Pope Benedict and praising his departure. The messages lasted for a fraction of a section each, and describe various dissatisfaction with the man and his rule over the Catholic Church. In addition, a second message seemingly criticizes an unnamed investor's plan to send an elderly couple into space on a voyage to Mars. An analysis of these two messages is ongoing, and no connections between the two of them have yet been found.
Two possibilities remain:

1) This is simply a prank or stunt. It is, in fact, on a comedy station.

2) This is a deliberate message sent from one party to another. Making the messages appear so quickly seems strange.

The New York police officer accused of scheming online to kidnap, cook and eat his wife will not testify in his trial, leaving his fate in the hands of the jury, it was revealed today.

Yesterday, jurors were forced to watch a video of a woman made to appear to be cooked over an open flame from the Dark Fetish website officer Gilberto Valle used, as the court heard the site has 38,000 members and 4,500 active users.

In the final day of testimony yesterday, Valle fought back tears as he told the judge it was 'not his desire' to testify.

Hospitals in the US have been hit by a wave of 'nightmare bacteria' that have become increasingly resistant to even the strongest antibiotics.

Public health officials have warned that in a growing number of cases existing antibiotics do not work against the superbug, Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE).

Patients became infected with the bacteria in nearly four per cent of US hospitals and in almost 18 per cent of specialist medical facilities in the first half of 2012, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

One of Casey Anthony's most fervent supporters has spoken out about the cash, gift cards and food her fans have donated to keep her alive.

In her first public appearance since she was acquitted in 2011 of murdering her toddler daughter Caylee, Anthony revealed she has no job or money and has been living off the kindness of strangers.

'I don't pay rent, I don't pay utilities so I guess you could say I'm living for free or off the kindness of the people I'm staying with,' she said in bankruptcy court on Monday. 'These items... they are unsolicited items that come from people I don't personally know.'

A swarm of an around one million locusts, pictured, has crossed the border from Egypt into Israel escalating fears that the country could be plagued with the 30 million insects that have have devastated crops elsewhere during Passover week. Israel's Agriculture Ministry sent out planes to spray pesticides over agricultural fields to prevent damage by the locusts and has set up an emergency hotline and asked Israelis to report sightings.

Syrian rebels have seized a convoy of U.N. peacekeepers near the Golan Heights and say they will hold them captive until President Bashar al-Assad's forces pull back from a rebel-held village which has seen heavy recent fighting.

The capture was announced in rebel videos posted on the Internet and confirmed on Wednesday by the United Nations in New York, which said about 20 peacekeepers had been detained.

The seizure, the most direct threat to U.N. personnel in the nearly two-year-old uprising against Assad, came on the day that Britain said it would increase aid to the opposition forces and the Arab League gave a green light to member states to arm the rebels.

The European Union fined Microsoft Corp 561 million euros ($731 million) on Wednesday for failing to offer users a choice of web browser, an unprecedented sanction that will act as a warning to other firms involved in EU antitrust disputes.

It said the U.S. software company had broken a legally binding commitment made in 2009 to ensure that consumers had a choice of how they access the internet, rather than defaulting to Microsoft's Explorer browser.

The United States warned Iran on Wednesday that it faces further international isolation if it fails to address U.N. nuclear watchdog concerns about its atomic activities.

The European Union also used a board meeting of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency to pile pressure on Iran to stop obstructing an IAEA investigation into suspected atom bomb research by Tehran, which denies the charge.

The body of a driver lay undetected on the front seat of his car beside one of New Zealand's busiest roads for five days before anyone called police, according to reports.

Auckland resident Alvin Singh was reported missing on February 22 and his corpse was found in his car, parked in plain sight near a major intersection, on February 27, after somebody eventually raised the alarm, police told the local news organisation Fairfax Media.

CCTV footage showed him pulling over and leaving the car briefly before getting back in prior to his death, police said.

The European Union (EU) demanded Spain today to implement new austerity measures in the areas of pensions, labor market and taxes to decrease public deficit.

Five days after the conservative government headed by Mariano Rajoy ruled out the option of implementing more social cuts, the European Commission considered Madrid has still a margin for increasing again the value added tax (VAT).

Attorney General Eric Holder is not entirely ruling out a scenario under which a drone strike would be ordered against Americans on U.S. soil, but says it has never been done previously and he could only see it being considered in an extraordinary circumstance.

His comments released on Tuesday were prompted by questions raised over the nomination of John Brennan to head the CIA. Specifically, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee sought the Obama administration's legal rationale for its use of drones to kill terror suspects overseas.

But Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican who has said he would do what he could to hold up Brennan's nomination until he got a full answer to his query, wanted to know whether the administration considered that policy applicable domestically.